The
Atlantic Whales website has always worked to bring together tourism
operators and researchers. In 2009 two expedition cruise companies -
Adventure Canada (one our sponsors!) and Cruise North passed along
orca photos from Northern Baffin Island to us. When we passed along
these photos to government scientists in Northern Canada they were
very grateful for the information. It turns out these scientists
were looking for these individual orcas and the photos were a
valuable contribution to their research. Their arctic study was
pioneering the use of radio tags on orcas. In August they managed to
get a radio tag on two of the "at least 16 animals" that
were in this group of arctic orcas.

Orcas
have a patchy history in this part of the north. While they were
known to the Inuit, for many years none were sighted. Perhaps it is
the decline in arctic sea ice or it may be some other factor that
has encouraged their return; but the one radio tag that kept working
revealed a group of orcas feeding in the high arctic - apparently on
harp seals and narwhals - from August until October when they
started moving southward. Orca scientists everywhere were curious
about what would happen next. Would these animals join the many
orcas known to over-winter off Greenland or would they swim south to
join the Newfoundland and Labrador orcas who we suspect are
over-wintering on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland? On October 23 the
radio tag showed the animals to be about 400 kilometres east of Cape
Chidley , the most northern part of Labrador. Ten days later they
were swimming off Funk Island, Newfoundland. Then they swam across
the Atlantic to the Azores where the transmitter finally failed.
This is the longest movement of orcas ever recorded. Perhaps these
arctic orcas are the same animals known to hunt pygmy sperm whales
and other small whales off the Azores.

The whale
world is still abuzz as we ponder this incredible north-south-east
journey. And we encourage orca watchers from the Azores to
Newfoundland and Labrador to the arctic to check the saddle patches
just behind the dorsal fins of any orcas they spot for these small
dark tags which may still be hanging on. It will be interesting to
see if the individuals with the attached satellite tags can be found
and photographed again. They may have more surprises for us.

For
further information on the research going on into the life history
of these Atlantic orcas check out this
page, which provides details about the ongoing research into the
orcas of the Arctic, on the website Orcas
of the Canadian Arctic.